Kevin Purdy

You hear it all the time: the rich and successful can feel just as overwhelmed, unhappy, and generally "busy" as people with those scraping by on fewer resources. But it always seems disingenuous. Here's one smart take on why there really is a salary tipping point.

According to a study focusing on 450,000 Americans and how they evaluate their happiness, a salary…
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Lack of free time, money, and happiness have been a popular essay topic of late. Women still can't have it all, and many of us are living in self-imposed business. One economist has a research paper out that tries to pin down exactly how money, hours, and happiness line up as you move up the income ladder. He found some logical data points and explanations, as explained by Atlantic writer Jordan Weissmann:

We all live on two things: time and money. And people who have extra income don't get much, if any, extra time to spend it. As a result, Hamermesh argues, each of their hours seems more valuable, and they feel the clock ticking away more acutely. ...

That isn't to say the rich are necessarily more stressed overall. While the poor are less likely to complain about a lack of time, they are much more likely to complain about a lack of money. "One of them is always going to be scarce for you. If you're rich, it's time that's scarce. If you're poor, it's the money that's scarce," Hamermesh says.

Read the full Atlantic post (and the research, if possible), and you might consider which side of the time/money balance you're on, and whether you need to move over a bit.